Bill Crider

Bill Crider is the winner of two Anthony Awards and an Edgar Award finalist. An English college professor for many years, he’s published more than seventy-five crime, Western, and horror novels, as well as a number of children’s books.

Crider's newest novel is Dead, to Begin With, the 24th Dan Rhodes Mystery.

Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Crider's reply:

I read a lot of older books by writers that most people don’t remember or haven’t heard of, and my current reading is no exception: The Body Beautiful by Bill S. Ballinger, his second novel about private-eye Barr Breed (somebody sure seems to like the letter “B”). It was published in 1949 and while it’s dated, it’s still fun to read and has quite an interesting showbiz background.

Ballinger went on to write quite a few crime novels, including two nearly forgotten classics, The Tooth and the Nail and Portrait in Smoke. In the 1960s he wrote a series of spy novels about a CIA agent named Joaquin Hawk. He also wrote a lot for TV, on shows like Kolchak: The Night Stalker and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And now you know more about Ballinger than you probably ever wanted to.

Visit Bill Crider's website and blog.

Read the Page 69 Test entries for Crider's A Mammoth Murder, Murder Among the OWLS, Of All Sad Words, Murder in Four Parts, Murder in the Air, The Wild Hog Murders, Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen, Compound Murder, Half in Love with Artful Death, Between the Living and the Dead, and Survivors Will Be Shot Again.

Learn about Crider's choice of actors to portray Dan Rhodes and Seepy Benton on the big screen.

--Marshal Zeringue